Chris Van Veen Marketing Communications

Social Media: Should you, and How?

You'll see references to the term Social Media almost everywhere you look today. The catch-all encompasses on-line creations such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other lesser-known ones.

As a marketing tool, companies can and do use social media to help boost visibility, awareness, buzz, and (of course) sales. It's also a great way to strengthen thought leadership, which I talked about previously. Small organizations wishing to act like bigger ones can use any of these tools to their advantage. Let's say you have a new product that's tough to describe in words or photos, but "BOY, would people go wild if they could see a VIDEO!" Try producing a homebrew video and upload it to YouTube. Then, point to it using Twitter or through a special Facebook page created for the purpose. Use of key words will help ensure that people find your content whenever and wherever they look. This treads on the territory of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is beyond the scope of a blog entry. But key words are important because they essentially represent electronic bread crumbs leading directly to your video, a white paper, or a Powerpoint presentation.

You may think of any of these tools as highly personal in nature. "Isn't Facebook where I tell people what music and TV shows I like?" Well, yes. But the lines of distinction are blurring. Companies are looking to evangelize and touch people wherever they may be. Smaller, less bureaucratic companies are often more nimble than larger ones, and they can turn on a dime to embrace social media quite readily. This is their ace in the hole, and many of these companies can trump larger ones thanks to this flexibility.

One of the keys to embracing social media is to be integrative about the process. In other words, Twitter can help strengthen a Facebook page, which can help draw viewers to a YouTube video. It's not unlike a mesh network where each point of the star can be reached by any other. Ultimately, these are relatively low cost initiatives that can often be implemented by existing personnel. Some large and expensive agencies may argue that they know best, but the reality is that social media is new for everybody.

The biggest bit of advice is this: don't dive into social media simply because everyone else is (or claims to be). Understand your value proposition and how you sell what you offer. It may turn out that one tool (say, Twitter) can pay dividends while another (YouTube) may not. And by all means, get the word out that you're getting the word out through social media. Social media represents a bigger trumpet, but you still need to play it correctly. Using social media, you can draw attention to all your other marketing activities such as white papers, conference speeches, trade show exhibits, and articles. Embracing social media in this fashion can help boost the ROI on these 'old-media' tools to the point where they pay off better than they ever did.